Pages

Monday, 20 October 2014

Self-Publishing - Is It For You? (Part One)

Catherine Lee

This week we interview Catherine Lee, self-published author of Dark Heart, a race-against-time thriller, and an exploration of cellular memory - can transplanted organs bring with them the memories of the donor?

Marilyn: Thanks for joining us, Catherine. Why did you decide to take the self-publishing route with your debut novel?

Catherine: I sent Dark Heart to an agent because I wanted to try traditional publishing. A rejection letter is a rite of passage and I wanted mine. It took five months before I finally got my rejection letter. The way I saw it, I could stick with that process and wait years to see my book in print, or I could do it myself in days. I wanted this book out in the world so I could move onto the next one. For me it was no contest.

Marilyn: How long did it take you to get Dark Heart to market?

Catherine: Self-publishing means you control everything yourself, so once you’ve had your manuscript professionally edited, you need to have your file in a format Amazon (or wherever you’re uploading it) will accept. It’s not hard: there are plenty who’ve done it and posted instructions on their blog. There are also programs that do it for you e.g. Scrivener (highly recommended). Next, get your cover design. To maintain a professional look, find a graphic artist and go through the design process.

Once you have those two things ready, the actual process of putting your finished product up for sale only takes a day or so.

Catherine: By far the biggest investment is editing. For Dark Heart, I had a professional manuscript assessment done. This, together with feedback from fellow writers, suggested my manuscript was in good shape structurally. I finished with a copy edit by a professional. The other upfront cost is cover design. Mine uses a stock photo, which the designer changed slightly using blurring and angles, with text over the top. It’s simple, but effective, and was cheap. Depending on the design, you can pay from $25 up into the hundreds. Apparently romance covers are the easiest and cheapest to produce.

Here’s the breakdown of costs for Dark Heart:

Manuscript assessment $500

Copy edit $550

Cover design $45

Print version cover design $45

Proof copy $30

I’ll be using the same editor for both structural and copy edits for my next book, Dark Past, and expect editing costs to be around $1500. From what I’ve read, anywhere between $1000 and $2000 is what you should expect to pay for good, professional editing services.

Marilyn: Thanks, Catherine. But before you go, can you finish off these sentences?

I love to love...Getting caught up in the world I’ve imagined for my characters.

I love to laugh...With friends. They’re essential to well-being, and I’m glad I have a great bunch of friends.

I love to learn...Things I never thought I needed to know. For instance, from Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George, I’ve just learned that more than 2 ships are lost at sea every week, yet we don’t hear about it. I find that amazing.

Do you have any questions for Catherine? Ask away!

In Part Two of this interview, Catherine talks about marketing your self-published novel. Stay tuned.

Fraser Grant was a kidnapper, a vile, murdering sociopath. Now he’s dead. Murdered in his own home, the women of Sydney can breathe easy again. All but one. His final victim is still missing — chained up, running out of time, and awaiting a captor who will never return.

Detective Sergeant Charlie Cooper is desperate to find the missing woman alive. On the verge of quitting Homicide after a decade chasing the brutal killer, this is his last chance to atone for all the victims he failed.

After a life-saving heart transplant, Eva Matthews just wants things to get back to normal. But when she learns she has the heart of the serial killer, will nothing stop the nightmares that plague her?

Dark Heart is a detective story, a race against time to save a life. But it’s also an exploration of cellular memory, the intriguing medical phenomenon of patients receiving more than just an organ from their donor. The terrifying serial killer may be dead, but that is just the beginning…

22 comments:

Informative post, Catherine. For years self-publishing has been looked down on as vanity press. Your book being professionally edited adds a more postive view to the process. Your 'I wanted this book out in the world so I could move onto the next one' reveal a get-out-there-and-do-it attitude. Always a plus for me. Wanting something doesn't make it happen. You need to 'do' to 'have'. Your novel tackles a very controversial topic. I look forward to reading it.

I suppose the major cost (for me) of self-publishing is the marketing time factor. I realize as a published author regardless of who you're with you need to market your books, but traditionally you have your publisher to rely on too. Self pubbed you'd only have yourself. How do you cope with trying to market yourself AND write a flow up AND live a normal life?

Great question, Dee, and I think this is a major thing to consider when you’re deciding whether self-pub is for you or not. You absolutely are taking your career in your own hands, no-one is going to do it for you. As I only have one book out there at the moment, I haven’t done a great deal of marketing yet. But what I am doing is reading a lot about how to market, so that when I have more in the series out there, I’ll be able to come up with an appropriate marketing strategy for the time. As this self-publishing revolution is quite new, what works now might not work in six months time, so you really have to keep in touch with the market. And yes, it all takes time. I’m fortunate in that I’m pretty disciplined when it comes to time management, so I’ve been able to allocate time to learn about marketing into my daily routines. But time to write must always come first - there’s no point marketing if you’ve got nothing to sell. I’ll talk more about marketing next week.

Great interview. Indie publishing seems scary to me, having all that responsibility. However, I can see the many upsides too. Having total control, able to see how your book is selling (and not having to wait for a royalties statement), picking your own editor etc. I see more and more that indie published authors are going for a print on demand package too. What do you think of that for future books Catherine?

Print on demand definitely has its place, but from everything I’ve heard and read in genre fiction particularly you tend to sell significantly more ebooks than print books. Dark Heart is available as print on demand through Amazon’s Createspace, and it wasn’t that much extra work to set up. I did it mainly because friends and family wanted a physical book to hold in their hands. I’ll probably do it for each book for that reason, but I don’t expect to sell many print books beyond friends and family. The advantage self-pubbers have over traditionally published books is the price point we are able to sell at - about the price of a cup of coffee for an e-book. That’s a big selling point, and it doesn’t work for the print on demand version where printing and delivery costs play a part.

Great post, Catherine. Professional editing could cost more than AUD$4,000 for a 100K book. But it is all relative. It depends on the editor and the author. Some guidelines for editing costs can be seen here http://www.sfep.org.uk/pub/mship/minimum_rates.asp

You’re right, editing costs can vary widely. I’m lucky I’ve found an editor I’m very happy with, and her prices are reasonable. The most important thing is to find an editor who fits your style of writing. Most good ones will edit a sample chapter or two for you before entering into any agreement, because it works both ways - they need to see if they are able to work with your writing style as well. It’s worth the time to find the right person, as it makes all the difference. I’ve just received the structural edit back for my second manuscript, and I’m very happy with the work my editor has done. It’s going to be a much better story once I’ve incorporated her suggestions and comments.

Thanks for this, Catherine. I would be interested to know if you recoup the outlay, so it makes it worth your while (without being super nosy about finances)? Also, have any publishers approached you after you self-pubbed?

Whether you recoup your outlay or not I think depends on what you’re willing to put into it. Have I recouped it yet? Absolutely not. Not with just one book, anyway. But I’m in this for the long haul, so to speak. I plan on making a career out of writing, and I see self-publishing as the way for me to do this. Self-publishing is the new mid-list - those authors who are willing to put in the work, consistently publish new titles every year, and put some effort into marketing, will eventually see the results. There are many authors out there making a good living at this, but it’s not about the one-hit wonders. Be consistent, build an audience one reader at a time, connect with those readers, and most importantly give them a darn good read, and you’ll recoup your investment many times over.

No, I haven’t been approached by any publishers yet, but I have definitely heard of this happening to others. I’m not sure whether I’d be interested in going with a publisher if they did. I quite like the idea of being in control of my work and the business that I’m trying to build as a writer. I don’t like the idea of signing the rights to something I’ve created over to someone else.

Great interview Catherine. Very informative. I had no idea about self-publishing and you make it sound so easy. I like the way you are looking at it as a business - you are building your own. Thanks so much for sharing. Good luck with your books they sound great.